Shin Kong Financial Holdings Co (
Shin Kong Financial said the net loss for the period from Feb. 19 (the day it began trading in TAIEX) to June 30 came after its unit Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) decided to put aside an additional NT$19.6 billion in reserves to cover potential losses stemming from higher policy claims.
"Like other local insurers, low interest rates are hurting Shin Kong's ability to pay higher returns on policies it sold in the past," said William Fong (
The holding company includes Shin Kong Life Insurance and Shin Kong Securities Co (
Anticipating a better economic performance during the second half of the year, Shin Kong Financial expects full-year net losses at NT$8.82 billion -- that compares to NT$3.96 billion in net profit which it had originally forecast in March, or earnings per share of NT$1.66.
The company will sell some of its real-estate assets in Taipei for an estimated NT$5.6 billion while also implementing cost-saving measures that will generate NT$1.1 billion in savings, to keep the full-year loss under NT$8.82 billion, said Jack Lee (李後利), spokesman and executive vice president.
Shin Kong failed, however, to find a buyer for its Tun-nan Building (敦南大樓) on Friday, on which it had set a minimum asking price of NT$6 billion. It hasn't set a date for a new auction of the office building.
In September the company will try to auction Jasper Villa (
While the company is confident in its sale of some of its real estate, analysts said they are not that optimistic, especially at a time when the nation's real-estate market is still in the doldrums.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by